


Time Enough

by Sanjuno



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman Beyond
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Batman as an example of How Not To Deal With Grief, Batman: Beyond is just one example, But can you even 'fix' the DCU?, Canon has been retconned, F/M, Issues are addressed in a healthy manner that promotes healing and recovery, Jason Todd Redemption, M/M, Matt has PTSD, Other than the Blue Steel Eyes, Protective Jason, SO MANY TIMES, Sassmaster McGinnis Brothers, Terry is So Done, The one good thing that comes with the Wayne Genetics, Time Travel Fix-It, Which is Understandable, i would say, in so many ways
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 13:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanjuno/pseuds/Sanjuno
Summary: Batman hates time travel.Terry especially hates it when time traveling psychotics destroy his timeline. Yeah, okay, so Old Man Wayne managed to stop the bastard.Whatever.That still means that Terry is stuck in a past that isn’t his own, in a reality justfamiliarenough to be painful. All he has left from his old world is a busted TARDIS, a bratty little brother with PTSD, and a dog big enough to make apartment hunting difficult. Terry isn’t even Batman anymore, he’s just… the Shadow of the Bat.(Plus, the less said about his newly acquired stalkers the better.)





	Time Enough

**Author's Note:**

> For awhile I actually liked SuperBat but then I realized that it was only the small collective of writers at this one pairing comm that I actually liked and nope, Sanjuno still finds Superman to be hella boring and Not Good For You, Bruce, You Have Enough Issues.
> 
> So I re-drafted this to take the SuperBat out, but Match and Terry are still Hot Like Burning and apparently being Bruce's mostly-clone has influenced this AU!Terry's personality in new and interesting directions.
> 
> Also AU!Matt is much better informed on Terry's extracurriculars than his canon counterpart.

=/=  
  
**(Oh when things bang, the way they bang.)**  
  
It was a stand-off. The battle that would inevitably result when one of them blinked would be epic. The clash of these two titans would be the stuff of legends. The fight would go down in song and story, written down in history texts for centuries to come.  
  
Or at least, that is what _would_ have happened had there been anyone other than a particularly disreputable alley-cat hanging around to bear witness. The tom’s baleful yellow eyes caught the light of the single working streetlamp for only a moment before the animal yowled in affront and slunk away for less occupied hunting grounds. The Gotham night was chill and clear, the shadows of the condemned factory lot deep. Whatever the case may be, the two combatants were alone but for each other, and judging by the antagonistic direction of their conversation ‘no witnesses’ suited them both just _fine_.  
  
“What’s the big deal, asshole?” Match snarled, still picking pieces of anti-aircraft missile out of his hair. “I’ve got nothing against you, and I know I haven’t done anything to mess with your territory, so what the fuck is your issue here?”  
  
“You broke my baby brother’s heart you know.” Red Hood chided, shaking his head in mock sadness. “All of that pretending to be Superboy and hitting on Wonder Girl messed things up. Little Baby Bird is as paranoid as the Old Man, and he won’t risk a relationship with someone who’s got such an _effective_ doppelganger.”  
  
“What the hell?” Match snarled, throwing up his hands up in aggravation. “You broke his face! Beat the guy half to death the first time you met him! _You shot him!_ Why the hell do you care if he hooks up with my goody two shoes twin?”  
  
“Because the Old Man hates the idea of his precious Boy Wonder having squishy pink feelings for a clone of the Alien.” Red Hood grinned under his mask. “Especially a clone that’s part Luthor. Anything that pisses off my Old Man is a good thing. Besides, he’s _my_ little brother, _I_ can beat on his ass if I want to. _You_ can keep your hands to yourself or I’ll cut them off.”  
  
“Oh?” Match folded his arms with a scowl. “And what am I supposed to do? Set up house in Tahiti and raise coconuts?”  
  
“You could try being creative and come up with something new.” Red Hood said dryly. “The whole replace-hero-with-physically-identical-but-mentally-unstable-clone thing is getting old.”  
  
Match snarled, a guttural sound that human vocal chords could never mimic, and bared his teeth in the beginning of a retort, and then was blown backwards into the crumbling brick wall of the factory as the air of the empty parking lot they stood in exploded.  
  
Ears ringing in the aftermath of his sudden ballistic flight through the wall of a derelict building, Match blessed the little crystal test tubes that had mixed his genes together. That would have smarted a bit had he been a little _less_ Super. Match stood up, shedding powdered mortar and crushed brick as he stomped out of the rubble. Red Hood had used some fucked-up Bat trick to avoid being turned into really modern graffiti. Looking around for the source of the explosion, Match forgot the incredibly clever quip he was about to make, hell, he even forgot to glare suspiciously at Red Hood when he saw the cause.  
  
Directly in the center of the dark lot where the two villains had been holding their confrontation was a sleek black pod. There was no visible method of propulsion, no sign of any wings or wheels or hint as to how the hell it had ended up in the middle of a Gotham slum. Match did not recognize any of the visible technology, but he did recognize the most important thing. Coloured brilliant, bloody red, the stylized form of a bat with outstretched wings blazed under the wan light of the streetlamp.  
  
/…/

**(Oh the way things move, the way they move.)**

Jason had to admit to a slight moment of shock. That was the only reason that the failure-clone managed to get to the pod ahead of him.

"Well, well. I wonder what old bats sent _uwahhg! Get it off!_ " A truly massive Rottweiler dog had lunged teeth first for Match's face. The dog twisted as it was thrown, snarling like a creature spawned in the pits of Hell as it planted itself between the retreating clone and the partially-forced-open door of the pod.

"Ace, heel." A deep, gravelly, bone-chillingly familiar voice accompanied the black claws that curled around the edge of the door and shoved it further open. While the voice was too close to familiar for comfort, the body it belonged to was not. Too lean for one thing, lacking the bulk and height that went with the voice. White lenses raked over Match once, dismissed him, and then that cowled face turned to look at Jason. " _Joker!_ "

"No!" Jason did not hesitate, he ripped off the Red Hood helmet, leaving his face covered only by the red domino mask he wore underneath. "No, I'm not the Joker! I am, was... I'm the Jaybird."

"The... second Robin?" The little red light on the batarang stopped its ominous flashing, but the black clad figure remained crouched and tense. "But you... died. At fifteen."

"I did." Jason knelt slowly and placed the helmet on the ground, keeping his hands in the air as he stood back up. He was not quite sure why he was trying to calm the new guy down, but anyone who's kneejerk reaction to the sight of the Joker was to throw explosives _first_ and ask questions later had to be worth talking to at least _once_. "Then I... got better. Do you know anything about the Lazarus Pits?"

"You work for _Al-Guhl?_ " The snarl in new-bat's voice was a good match for his dog's. Jesus. Christ.

"No. I… it was a plot against… to mess with Batman." Jason kept his hands up even as he felt the involuntary tensing of his shoulders. The red Bat stared at him for a long moment before the Batarang just _shrank_ , collapsing down into something about the size of a dollar coin. "... I take it there's some personal resentment there?"

"Yes." The new kid did not seem inclined to give out the details, just rested a hand on the Rottweiler’s head for a moment before glancing at where Match was still watching. The clone did not move, and after a minute of silent staring the new Bat just shrugged and turned back to his pod. Jason was itching to find out if the kid was a time traveler or from a parallel universe or a time traveler _from_ a parallel universe. Hey, it had happened before. The red Bat rapped his knuckles against the half-open pod door. "Fledge? You ready to come out?"

"... Big brother..." Jason was expecting a Robin, he was man enough to admit to it. Seeing the tiny kid in black and grey and only the occasional hint of green was enough to make Jason pause. That costume was not... that suit was basically an advanced version of the baby-bat-in-training, stay-in-the-cave-or-else, only-in-case-of-cave-invasion, we-have-no-other-choice, end-of-the-world trainee suit... that was _not Robin_. The kid should never have left the cave, not in _that_ suit. That suit was the hide-and-survive emergency kit for the _babies_. A suit Dickie had designed when he was still dreaming of happily-ever-afters with Babs. That suit had never made it to development stage, for obvious reasons, and now here was this kid, _wearing_ it. "Big brother, Father is... Father is..."

"I know. C'mere, Fledge. I know." Neither of them had capes, which struck Jason as weird for some inexplicable reason, but that only made it easier to see how Fledge's shoulders shook as he clung to his older brother and cried.

"... What happened?" Jason let his hands drop, not daring to move forward but wanting to... to do something. He was not sure what, just... something. Some atrophied part of his heart, the bit that _still_ looked at the bat symbol and thought _mine_. His. His family. His to defend. His protectorate grieving and broken and Jason _needed to know who he had to kill to make it better_.

The Bat lifted his head to look at Jason, head cocked like he was deep in consideration and projecting the same kind of aura that had convinced a much younger Jason that Batman could read minds. "Are we to attend the Masquerade?"

_Holy shit_. Jason had _never_ been asked that question before. A completely out-of-place bolt of homesickness ripped through his chest and made it necessary to clear his throat before he could answer. "When the street sparrows sing the midnight hour."

"... Alright." The Bat slumped, relief and… that was trust. Just like that, Jason could feel the shift. The Bat's voice was rougher. Grief, Jason realized with another wrench of his heart. "The... I guess we can call it the 'timeline' that we're from was under attack. Father... Father managed to stop the entity that was causing the destruction but the destabilization was too advanced. The effects were contained to our particular reality but..." The Bat's head dropped to rest against his brother's. The little boy wedged himself more closely to his big brother's chest. "Father was... he was dying. He had been for a while, the stress was just too much for his heart to take. Especially after the… the Joker venom a few years ago."

_Fuck_ , Jason did _not_ want to hear any more. Just the idea that there was more than one Joker… even if it was in an alternate Gotham, it was a thought that had him feeling more than a little homicidal and the new kid did _not_ deserve to catch the raw edge of Jason's temper. Jason could feel his trigger finger itch as the Bat tightened his hold on Fledge and continued. "Everything was falling apart. It was just… chaos. Worse than the records of the No Man’s Land earthquake. Father wouldn't let me help him. He paralyzed the suits, put Fledge and I in the dislocation pod with the dogs and... everyone else was already _dead_. I don't know who he thought he could save by staying behind..."

Them. Jason realized with a sick, sinking feeling in his gut. Jason had traveled to enough parallel worlds to know how the science worked. Their father had saved his sons, and the world they had arrived in. In order to send them through dimensions and still seal the rip behind them, there had to be someone on the other end to initiate the repairs. Their father had died for them. The Bat's breathing was harsh, and Jason was not going to push. Not with the Fledge kid hiccupping like that, and not when the new Bat was well aware of what his father had done. "So, do you need me to show you where the cave is? No guarantee that the big Bat will be there, but Golden Boy and the Replacement should be there at some point."

"Are you talking about Nightwing and the Third Robin?" Right, so _why_ had the snarly voice come back? Red Bat was on the verge of a crying jag, stoically suppressing his manly tears, and instead of jumping on the chance to unite (reunite, maybe? Whatever...) with Bruce's favorite sons just the _mention_ of them brings out the crazy claws. Yet somehow _Jason_ is acceptable company? What sort of bizzaro world did this kid _come_ from? Huh. A world where Jason stayed dead, apparently, since the new guy had no issue with Jason. Red Bat put Fledge down, turned to face Jason head on, and _growled_. "I want nothing to do with those _traitors_."

"... I'm missing something here." Match mused out loud to himself, leaning against the dirty brick of a mostly intact wall. "I've got no idea what it is, but I know that I'm missing it."

"Shut up, clone." Jason was bemused, and it showed in the lack of bite in his tone. Head tilting in confusion, Jason raised an eyebrow as he stared at the Red Bat. "Do you mind... explaining the 'traitors' thing? Just a bit confused by it, you see."

"... They abandoned him. Father. They left him alone." Clawed black hands curled into fists, and a guttural snarl of rage escaped the tense form. "For _decades_. Whining about their poor tender little feelings being hurt. He was alone when his heart gave out and was forced to retire as Batman. When the Joker killed hundreds of people and put Father in the hospital. A ninety year old man with a chronic heart murmur, and they did fuck all to help while he _killed himself_ saving the multiverse. Because his crusade _wasn't any of their business_. The mission _wasn't their problem_ _anymore_. Sanctimonious _bastards_."

Jason just... blinked for a minute, digesting that. The idea that Bruce died alone... it did not sit well with Jason, but more importantly... "Dad makes it to _ninety_?"

"Ninety-three, and it wasn't a natural death." Jason could hear the smirk in the Bat's voice, the fierce pride. Then Jason's eyes moved down to the quiet little boy clinging to his big brother's leg.

"Ninety-three... and the two of you are... how old?" Just, the mind boggled. Yeah, Playboy Brucie was a thing, but it was not a thing Jason had expected to last until Bruce was _in his nineties_.

"My brother and I are the end result of secret genetics experiments enacted with the goal of ensuring that Gotham always had a Batman, effectively prompted by the very public defection of Nightwing and Batgirl after the forcible retirement of the Third Robin due to extreme PTSD." The Red Bat twitched and laughed, the sound broken and bitter and hollow, and Jason... Jason was not sure if he was relieved or not. On one hand, no senior citizen dad sex. (Oh god, he would never be able to unthink that. _Forever unclean..._ ) On the other hand, someone somewhere was secretly breeding bat babies because Bruce (Jason's _Dad_ ) had been left to defend Gotham on his own. (Forcible retirement? More like Dad had gotten scared and tried to shove baby bird back into the nest until his paranoia died back down to manageable levels.) "It took that long to find a perfect match for the parental psyche profiles. Grandmother and Grandfather were apparently very singular people. I suppose I got luckier than Father did. The assassin sent after my proxies had a change of heart at the last minute. Not that it kept them alive, but... the extra years gave Fledge the chance to be born."

Holy shit. His heart. Jason could not take much more of this brave little toaster bullshit. His mind was made up. "Okay. You're coming with me."

"We are?" There was something hollow in the kid's tone, and Jason felt like smacking himself in order to knock some of the stupid out. Shock. Fuck, they had just watched their father (Bruce, _Dad_ ) die to make sure something that could destroy _entire realities_ could never follow after them.

"Yeah, you are." Jason spun to point at the clone. "And so are you, alien spawn. Not that I want decaying clone juice all over my pad, but I need you to keep your trap shut and carry the pod thing."

Plus, Jason kept his emergency kryptonite knife in his base. The ring in his belt was good for defense, but it was hard to kill with. Not that Jason could not do it, he just _was not_ in the mood for the mess that would result. The clone looked miffed. Jesus, it was like Clark disapproving of his little shoplifting habit all over again. "Why the hell should I do anything you say?"

"You're experiencing clone degeneration? Because I can fix that." The red Bat was staring at Match, and a slow grin grew on his face as the clone eyed him back. "What do you say to an exchange? You keep my secrets and carry my luggage, I keep you from turning into a radioactive puddle of plasma and unzipped DNA sequences. Deal?"

"... Sure." Match blinked, and Jason felt like an asshole for throwing the decay thing in the clone’s face after seeing how painfully hopeful the guy was. "I'll take that deal."

"Great." The Red Bat turned around and fished a half-grown Rottweiler puppy out of the pod and stepped back in order to let a bitch equally as massive as the dog jump out onto the shattered concrete. "All yours. Try to get the door mostly closed if you can, please. Having the stuff inside fall out would be... bad."

"Sure." Match stepped up to the pod and pulled the door shut, hauling the pod up over one shoulder and looking at the trio of Bats. "Lead on."

"This way." Jason scooped up his helmet and saw how the red Bat tensed. All three dogs were snarling.

... Maybe Jason would just leave the helmet off for now. Just until he got the whole story plus details out of the newbie.

"So, you can stop clone decay, huh?" Jason tucked the helmet into his bag and led the way down Gotham's back alleys. The dogs slid into the shadows in a way that was frankly creepy. Ninja dogs, for the love of fuck. Batdad apparently goes crazy without kids around to bitch out and ride herd on. Good to know. "You get much use out of that skill where you come from?"

"No. But biology and medicine are my focus and expertise areas." Oh-ho? Jason flashed a grin at the red Bat, noting Match's interest in the conversation. Leslie would like this one, if she ever got to know him. For the given value of like, given that the kid was _probably_ the Batman of his Gotham, given the suit he had on. The good doctor had always bitched about Bruce not following in Thomas Wayne's footsteps. She would appreciate another doctor in the family, even if that doctor was _still the goddamn Batman_. Fledge was lifted up onto his big brother’s back as they paused to scan their surroundings for spying eyes. The three dogs kept up, even when the humans took to the rooftops. The new Bat stared out over an unfamiliar Gotham, his voice dropped low like someone sharing a secret. "... We had an older brother, once. He's where the people who created my little brother and I got the idea of breeding a new Batman. Al-Guhl killed him a long time before we were born, for not wanting to be a complete monster. Then Al-Guhl used a clone of him to hurt our Father. Al-Guhl... didn't care about how long the clone lasted, but... he was so _proud_ to be Batman's son. He could have been my brother, my teacher or partner, if Al-Guhl hadn't fucked with him. "

"I see." Yeah, Jason could understand that. Match's mouth thinned, and he was staring at the red Bat's back with an unreadable expression. Clark had looked at Dad that way sometimes, and it had always made Jason want to _punch the goddamned alien in the throat_. "Come on then, little brothers. Let's get the two of you home."

=/=

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because everyone writes at least _one_ SuperBat story if they write for DCU at all and I wanted to stand out.
> 
> Then I realized that the _only_ one of his brothers that Jason has zero beef with was Terry because Terry isn't born for another sixty years after his Roaring Rampage Of Revenge.
> 
> _And then_ I felt sorry for Match. He just wants love, the poor sprout.


End file.
